Before you were diagnosed

What was life like before you were diagnosed with DID? Were things unstable and chaotic? Did you find yourself confused a lot of the time?

I am a support person and for those of you that remember me, my boyfriend recently had a hard switch and left. He is undiagnosed and not in therapy. Life for him has been a series of jobs, relationships and seeking out happiness and never quite finding it. I'm sure there's a myriad of other symptoms at work here such as depression and depersonalization.

I've come across so many threads on this forum with folks that have successful relationships with their SO's, and are working on things, yet my partner is the one that ran away! I can only assume this is because the issues are not being worked on. Help! Were any of you this way before diagnosis/therapy?

Patience wrote:I've come across so many threads on this forum with folks that have successful relationships with their SO's, and are working on things, yet my partner is the one that ran away! I can only assume this is because the issues are not being worked on.

Yup. He is not here, working on his issues. He is running away.

I am a high functioning multiple and my career reflects that more than my personal life. Repeatedly I make huge investments into something, then suddenly lose interest and move on to something else. That is us flip-flopping between my interests and Alter 2's interests. For most of my adult life I have been single and not deeply attached to anyone, which may be why my relationships have been mostly stable. And shallow.

Thanks Una+. He is also extremely high functioning and very intelligent. This is precisely one of the very reasons I never pushed therapy. I mean..first I think it would be wrong to push to begin with, but I worried about it affecting is career.

Before this switch...would took a few weeks to complete if I am mistaken, he did tell me he wanted to run away. He couldn't handle the responsibilities.

As long as I have known him he has flip-flopped interests as well, as well as where he wanted to live. And it always seems just as we'd get really close, and things were going really well...he'd pull away.

This seems like a teen that ran away. He literally ran away from home. Wanted more excitement. Was feeling old, he said. And now, he has gone silent. Almost as if he's in hiding.

I just went through some journal entries from 2005 and 2008, showing my concern over losing time, confusion about identity, and sadness and loneliness. Honestly, I still go through this. I'm not sure I can have healthy relationships. I believe that attachment issues are part of the core problem with ptsd and did, as many of us did not learn to trust caregivers in early childhood. This can have long-term effects in attachment / relationships through adulthood.

That's not to say it's impossible. I think I have been in love before. Sometimes I cannot cope with the fact that someone cares about me. Or I feel indebted to be loved, rather than the love. Much of the time, I need to be alone. Everyone is different. It's phasic for me. When I'm comfortable with myselves, I'm open to love. If I'm in a transitional period or dealing with trauma issues, I'm not open to love.

Totally normal, even without DID in the mix. Getting close to another person is scary and fleeing the relationship is a common defense.

Re getting your guy into therapy, there are two schools of thought about how to proceed.

One is there is no point intervening; he will seek help when (if) he is ready, and pushing before he is ready can only do harm. This school also tends to the view that intervening is nothing more than busybody interfering and shaming, another person's mental health is none of your business, people don't change, there is nothing to be done, it is hopeless, etc. This hopelessness and helplessness infuriates me; I heard this in my FOO all the time and, frankly, they were wrong.

The other is that interventions are not only possible but may be necessary, so if you care enough to try then you should try. Some religious groups are big on intervention, others not. An increasing number of books address how to go about making an intervention. One that I read is You Need Help!: A Step-by-Step Plan to Convince a Loved One to Get Counseling by Mark S. Komrad, MD.

Therapy does not have to be so aggressive that it makes the client dysfunctional. Good supportive therapy starts with lots of stabilization and skills building so that a high-functioning client will be able to remain high functioning and safe and productive in their job even while doing the hard work of therapy.

Sorry about all my typing errors in my last post, yikes! I'm typing faster than I'm thinking.

I care so much for him. I hate the idea of him flailing in the wind when it seems I have the answer. Or at least some of them. Then again, I remember that we HAVE talked about this. On quite a few occasions. It appears one alter, could be his ISH, IS aware of his DID and told me it saved his life. Before he had this hard switch, he told me he was going to try to find someone to talk to. I don't know if he was serious or trying to appease me, though he brought it up.

He has been so good to me. An extremely caring and intelligent person. But so troubled and conflicted on the inside. I believe this was sabotage by another alter, too.

There's going to be a lot of info coming your way about this, I just want to say this;

You are a wonderful support to care so deeply and want this person to be well. The one thing that my SO is learning and having a hard time with is taking care of herself first.

I'm sure you know this already, but it never hurts to hear. You need to make sure YOU are okay before anything. YOU can't support anyone if you aren't supporting yourself (or have your own support system in place). Sometimes my SO has to take a step back because she gets involved pretty deeply, how can she not, love is love!

Again, I'm sure you know this and I don't want to seem like I'm talking down, I've just really learned the importance of a support unit or SO making sure they are safe and healthy first, then worry about the DID.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for sharing with us!

I appreciate that very much. No, you are not talking down to me at all, I know you're saying that because you care, and because it's also very true. I've learned that during these years that is so very true. I liken it to the oxygen in the airplane, that you need to give yourself the oxygen before helping someone else.

I think there could be a lot of factors at work here, and since I don't know for sure it's a challenge, and that's why I asked the "before you were diagnosed" question; maybe that's why his system is in chaos and so conflicted because there is no order. I also imagine he must be scared, with some of the symptoms, not knowing why they are there, and afraid someone would try to drug him or "lock him up." or something, and of course nothing could be further from the truth.

I am playing a guessing game here. Trying to find some common ground with someone. Trying to understand why so many people with DID are afraid of being abandoned, yet he does the abandoning.

I may be looking way to deep into all of this. Could be simple as another alter taking control that just doesn't care for me, has different goals in mind, or simply can't feel love for me because his emotions are so compartmentalized.

I'm reading so much about alters taking the role of the host, alters shutting each other out, wondering if the host loved me or another alter, or what's going on, and all these scenarios that I'm just feeling more confused than ever.

Patience wrote:Trying to understand why so many people with DID are afraid of being abandoned, yet he does the abandoning.

They do both of these things because that is the only behavior they know. That is the behavior their families showed them and taught them to show to others. Fear of being abandoned goes hand-in-hand with being the one who abandons. The natural automatic thought behind this behavior is: she is going to do it to me unless I do it to her first.

Patience wrote:Could be simple as another alter taking control that just doesn't care for me, has different goals in mind, or simply can't feel love for me because his emotions are so compartmentalized.

Yes and no. On a superficial level yes, it is this simple. But the reality is that no matter how fragmented he is, he is still one person. Someone with DID has the same conflicts and faces the same life problems that non-DID persons face, and uses the same defenses that non-DID persons use. Looking at his system as a whole, you can and probably should apply the same standards to him as you would to anyone.

If a boyfriend without DID left you like this, would you take him back? Would you set conditions on taking him back?

I think my condition would be for him to get help. And that isn't about the relationship. It's about him being able to take control of his life, to make his own decisions and not let this dictate his life for him. About him genuinely finding that happiness that he is so desperately seeking. I would love to see a smile on his face and know there was genuine contentment behind that smile.

I care so much about him that I let him go because it's what this one wanted.

I guess only fate will decide what will happen.